DocWatts

@Hardkill I don't deny that AOC is further Left than much of the rest of the country. Just that calling her a radical Leftist is an inaccurate caricature advanced by bad faith actors on the Right, as she's a reformist Social Democrat. Advocating for policies that are uncontroversial in most of the rest of the developed world is hardly the mark of a Radical.

Marx was aware of this as well, though his take on modes of production as the driving force behind historical change was more Reductionist than Ken Wilber's holistic model. It's interesting to notice how different modes of production naturally lend themselves to different types of social and political organization. Beige and Purple are an outgrowth of hunter gatherer and horticulturalist survival bands, where social organization is face to face and non-depersonalized. Intimate knowledge of one's ecological environment, which plants are edible or useful, can be considered a technology at this stage every bit as much as fire or hand tools. The agricultural mode of production brought with it changes to social organization which resulted in changes in the collective interior as societies grew too large to operate on an interpersonal, face to face basis. Survival conditions are such that we begin to see the rise of dominator hierarchies and social stratification. This mode of production also necessitates the shift from a spirit haunted world to more distant power gods who are to be pleased with and appeased. The mercantile system which emerged as agrarian societies grew larger and began to operate on a basis other than pure 'might makes right' dominator hierarchies also brought with it changes to the collective unconscious. Here societies are characterized by a shared mythology (usually religion) which serves the sociological purpose of allowing large societies to operate on something other than raw power Dynamics. The mercantilist mode of production allows for the specialization of labor in to professions on a wide scale basis, setting the stage for the emergence of industrialization. Will get to the Industrial and Post Industrial stages later to keep this post from turning in to a giant wall of text

Since I see some book recommendations popping up, I've been interested in learning more about the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. Anyone familiar enough with the subject to toss a book recommendation my way?

What part of AOC's political platform do you consider to be 'radicaly Leftist?'

It's not that Liberals aren't at times egotistical and hypocritical, it's just that on the whole (ie. allowing for individual differences), that they're far less so than Conservatives. Sure the Liberal meta-ideology (whose center of gravity is SD-Orange with a bit of SD-Green on some social issues) has a ton of holes you can poke in it, but that's even more true of Conservative ideologies.

I'm somewhere between a Social Democrat and Market Socialist myself and broadly agree with the Progressive worldview espoused by TYT, but as a news source they're not great. Their news coverage trends towards the same types of sensationalism seen in other for Profit news networks, and they're not very good at framing other worldviews and perspectives in constructive ways. Compare TYT to (what I at least consider) a high quality news source, The Conversation, and the difference is notable between the two in being able to synthesize different viewpoints in a complex way. That said, I think Cenk and Anna and the other TYT people mean well, and in Cenk's case his most valuable public contribution is Wolf PAC, which is working towards a constitutional amendment to push back against the corrupting influence of Corporations in electoral politics.

I believe she mentioned that she wasn't interested in running for President (something along the lines of we need to stop looking for savours was the gist of it). I'm not at all optimistic about 2024, as Republicans taking the House or Senate in 2022 will effectively be the end of Biden's presidency as far as getting any Legislation passed. While it's fair to point out the problems with the Democratic Party as far as messaging and controlling the narrative, at the same time the entire system is weighted in the Republican Party's favor due to archiac and anti democratic nature of the US Senate, Supreme Court, and Electoral College. To use an analogy the Democratic Party is like a female employee entering a sexist workplace; having to work twice as hard and receiving half the recognition for their accomplishments. Something like half of Republican voters thought those nice stimulus checks they received earlier this year were due to the efforts of thier own Party, when in actuality not a single Republican voted in favor of the Stimulus Package....

@snowyowl Unfortunately there are structural reasons why the two party system is likely to remain in place here in the US. The reason stuff like this makes it in to Bills is that the Democratic Party (which consists of a conservative and progressive wing) just barely hold a majority in Congress and have an incredibly fragile coalition, and regressive policies like this are the result of conservative Dems insisting that right wing policy is shoved in to Bills like this in order for it to Pass. A single democratic Senator withholding their Vote is enough to sink the entire Infrastructure Package, something which is taken advantage of by opportunistic conservatives who take in boatloads of money from corporate lobbyists who fund thier election campaigns. (If this sounds like a corrupt system, it absolutely is). As a side note, found this interesting video a while back which details what the US political system would look like if multiple parties were actually viable

The Democratic Party is split between two wings : a Moderate / Conservative Wing and a Progressive Wing (what other countries would call Social Democrats). The Republican Party is openly undemocratic and has begun courting fascism as a way to gain political power. Thier ideal would be for the US to become a mirror of Putin's autocratic Russia, where a plutocratic elite has free reign to loot the country after they've managed to effectively end democracy

Sounds like you're looking for literary works with portrayals of healthy masculinity? Some examples that come to mind : Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - A contemporary humanization of the hero of Greek legend told from the point of view of Achille's friend / lover Patrocalus. It's a story about love, friendship, vulnerability, the costs of violence, and expectations that society places on men. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - What's interesting about LOTR is that it manages to have a few different portrayals of healthy masculinity. Aragorn is in many ways a traditional masculine hero but at the same time he shows emotions such as vulnerability, and uses his strength to protect others. Sam and Frodo's relationship is one of the most authentic portrayals of the depth of friendship I've seen portrayed in a work of fiction. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guinn- The male protagonist struggles with his restrictive preconceptions of gender while stationed on a desolate planet where the categories of male and female are far more fluid than on our world. A story about the bonds of friendship and the struggle for survival in a harsh and brutal environment.

Refreshing to hear a Right leaning person being honest about their Motivations for a change and just openly embracing a Social Darwinian culling of the weak. Get yourself a red lightsaber and your philosophy would be right at home for a Sith villain from Star Wars.

Oh boy, where to even begin attempting to dissect the level of indoctrination in to Right Wing ethno -nationalist propaganda in this post. The Nazis are right in certain points? Preytell, what enlightened opinions should be imbue from a genocidal ethno-supremecist regime that needlessly caused the deaths of tens of millions of people? And humans aren't causing climate change? Despite that being the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists all around the world? You realize that fossil fuel companies have launched a decades long disinformation campaign to misinform and confuse the public by creating the false impression of a debate among the scientific community over an issue where there's broad agreement: a misinformation campaign that you apparently you fell for. It's the exactly the same type of tactics the tobacco industry used to try and misinform the public about cigarettes.

Just about sums up the current dumpster fire that is American politics.

Frank Herbert's Dune strikes me as a very Yellow way of approaching topics like environmentalism, politics, and religion through the lens of literatury fiction.

Another thing worth pointing out is that shifting to an early stage can sometimes be situationally appropriate. If you've ever known or listened to anyone who had the misfortune of growing up in a rough neighborhood (such as some inner cities in the US), knowing how to activate Red is a key part of being able to Survive in those types of environments. Sports such as boxing or mixed marital arts are another scenario where being able to activate Red power drives is adaptive.

Detroit joins a growing list of cities which have begun decriminalizing psychedelics. The ballot initiative which passed the other day decriminalizes most forms of psychedelics including mushrooms, peyote, and DMT. https://m.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2021/11/03/detroit-voters-just-decriminalized-magic-mushrooms-and-other-entheogenic-plants

@Hardkill Obama was really only a proximate cause for the rise of Trumpism. The seeds were already planted by: forty years of stagnating living standards due to neoliberal austerity politics, demographic anxiety as America becomes less white and less Christian, and a larger meta-paradigm shift away from SD Blue and Orange towards Green. The collective ego backlash we're living through was also something that was cultivated by large and well funded propaganda syndicates which the Right Wing uses to exploit cultural divisions for the purposes of amassing wealth and political power. These are systemic issues which would actually need to be solved in order to diffuse the threat of far Right ethno nationalism.

This was in response to whether human beings are innately compassionate, or whether compassion is something that is cultivated by socialization. Obviously the fact that we can act in humane ways means that we have an innate capacity for compassion. But does socialization stunt this capacity, or develop it? Perhaps framing the question as whether there's such a thing as 'human nature' absent of any social conditioning, would be a better way of putting it.

@Nahm I suppose that brings up some interesting questions about if humans have a 'default' state of being, and if so what that nature is. My own intuition is that if such a thing exists, our 'natural' circle of concern remains quite small unless cultivated through socialization. Just considering the sorts of social structures that we're adapted to (small hunter gatherer tribes) are based on kin selection, and for the vast majority of human history opportunities to interact with people outside of one's small social circle was very limited. That said, the tricky thing with these sorts of questions is that the consequences for having an overly optimistic or pessimistic view of human nature can have rather drastic negative consequences.

Fair, and upon reflection perhaps I was responding to a connotation of implied passivity that wasn't necessary there, and was an assumption on my part. I suppose my larger point would be that compassion requires discernment, as acting in the world is a necessary component of compassion and every decision one makes brings with it opportunity costs.

Sure, but this deeper Truth is something that has to be compartmentalized to some degree because we have to live in a world where we have obligations towards other people. Compassion without good judgement and the ability to act in the world is mere sentiment. Being compassionate towards individuals while being critical towards institutions and ideologies seems like a good principle to live one's life by. Which includes being cultivating the ability to respond to the world in situationally appropriate ways

The structure of the Electoral College and Senate are arranged in a way to allow a minority of the country, namely rural white voters, to have an outsized influence on the political landscape. No doubt that whatever crypto-fascist clown the GOP runs in '24 will lose the popular Vote, but the system is rigged in a way where a candidate can lose by several million votes and still get sworn in to office. It's telling that Republicans have only managed to win the popular Vote one time in the past six presidential elections, yet were handed victory a total of three times. It's even worse for the Senate. Someone living in Wyoming has something like fifteen times the amount of Senatorial representation of someone living in California, because each state has two Senators representing them, regardless of population. The reason that Dems tend to lose isn't purely due to their own incompetence (though I won't deny this is a factor), but because they have a number of structural obstacles in their path. Obstacles that are hard to remove because they're baked in to the Institutions, and are fiercely defended by a minority who wouldn't be able to win elections without these undemocratic anachronisms. That's not to let the Democratic Party off the hook, as four decades of stagnating living standards from neoliberal austerity politics have created social conditions ripe for demagogues to benefit from widespread feelings of anger and disillusionment. And of course all of this is in addition to widespread and targeted efforts of Voting Suppression, and a large and well oiled propaganda machine with the express purpose of distracting and misinforming the public.

Also worth keeping in mind that a country like the United States is, at least federally, really only a partial democracy due to a number of undemocratic features baked into the structure of its Institutions (the highly undemocratic way that the Senate seats are distributed and the Electoral College being the most obvious examples). So any paradigm shifts among the broader population will naturally take longer to take root in State Institutions (at least on a Federal level), because the system is weighted in favor of the rural regions of the country.

While I'm far from being in any way supportive of the Military Industrial Complex, I see no inherent problem in the careful and deliberate use of historical anologies to contextualize the scale of the effort required to address Climate Change. Contextualizing something like the Green New Deal with analogies to the scale of The Marshal Plan or the United State's rapid change of Industrial priorities due to World War 2 seems like an appropriate way of framing discussions around the issue. Especially since here in the States it feels like nothing policy wise that's ambitious in scope has been attempted in the living memory of many people alive today, so there's not really a good contemporary analogue that can be looked to for illustrative purposes.